Telecom Law Monitor

As in years, past, we're tracking the FCC Regulatory fees for you.  The Regulatory Fee is an annual assessment mandated by Congress to recover most of the FCC's cost of doing business.  Regulatory fees are recovered directly from the entities the FCC regulates.  As I've noted before, the FCC collects nearly half of its fees from telecommunications carriers, an amount that I believe is disproportionate to the FCC's overall activities.

The due date for regulatory fees varies from year to year, but the FCC must collect regulatory fees before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.  This year, the FCC announced that the fee is due on September 14th by 12 midnight.   As with the past few years, the FCC does not mail invoices and payments are due on-line.  Also, a late fee of 25% of the amount due is assessed on all late payments (no exceptions).

See Kelley Drye's client advisory on the topic for more information.  For those paying regulatory fees, see the links below for more detail on where and how to pay the fees.  As a reminder, our Resource Center contains helpful links to the FCC and other sites of interest to regulated entities.

The FCC released a host of public notices today concerning the FY 2011 Regulatory fees.  The public notice announcing the due date is available here.  Also, see these links for FCC instructions on using its mandatory fee filer system and on methods and procedures for making payment.  Service-specific instructions are available as well, the most common of which are available below:

• Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers.   This category includes the majority of readers of this blog, including common carriers, interconnected VoIP providers, audio bridging providers and prepaid card providers. 
• Cable Service Providers.
• Satellite and Fixed International Providers.
• Commercial Mobile Service Providers.

Additional information is available on the FCC regulatory fee website.